1.12

Last time, the biggest chapter ever, a whole lot of stuff happens, and we learn his dad is crazier than anyone thought but all Emothan can think about is how unfair that is to him.

When we came back from winter break, the halls had been tagged with spray paint, covering the lockers and walls. Only it wasn’t the usual graffiti; the words didn’t even look like English. You wouldn’t have thought they were words at all, unless you had seen The Book of Moons.

Um that actually seems less “curious incident” and more exorcism territory, as well as the point where they should have at least had an argument regarding telling one of the adults. Failing that, they should at least have copied the stuff down in case it’s some dire threat/warning and show it to someone – start with Marian and hope her noninterference clause will stop her from blabbing if it comes to that, then if she doesn’t recognize it, show Pretty Suit and hope it doesn’t explicitly say you found the book.

Also, this is totally expel worthy. It’s mystery writing, which is to say obviously satanic, so obviously we should blame Lena. They even have proof on their side – a simple locker search, which of course you’d do trying to find the spray cans, would turn up a freaky book that contains the same writing and also burns at the touch and also has enough sections in English to make it obvious it’s witchcraft.

But apparently no one cares! We don’t even get Emothan saying how normally, the principal would have ordered a search looking for spray cans, but this time he just looked at Lena like he knew it was her and didn’t do anything, because he knew that he could find a pile of spray cans with a confession pinned to the top and he still couldn’t expel her, not with her uncle breathing down his neck.

A week later, every window in our English classroom was busted out. Again, it could have been the wind, except there wasn’t even a breeze. How could the wind target a single classroom, anyway?

That’s just Lena, Emothan. She’s probably feeling really stressed right now, and we know window smashing by telekinesis and window smashing by wind are both things she can do.

I got back to my locker to find the door open and my papers scattered all over the hall. My backpack was gone. Though Link found it a few hours later, dumped in a trashcan outside the gym, I had learned my lesson. Jackson High was no place for The Book of Moons.

This is seriously the flow. Book is obviously screwing with its surroundings, book might be violently screwing with its surroundings, book disappears from locker – clearly, the only thing to take from that is that someone took his bad and threw it out, so he should keep it somewhere with fewer people. His house, of course.

We know his house has a helpful thing he thinks is a ghost and could drop more clues, and the book is definitely messing with things and may be malevolent, but obviously it’s fine to bring the two into contact and risk having mommy-ghost get eaten or turned into a crazed rage ghost by the book. His house also has some kind of defense against bad stuff that this might compromise – I mean, we know Amma panicked at just the locket, and that seems to have done practically nothing, while the book is obviously incredibly powerful. And having the secret book closer to Amma won’t have any repercussions!

No, seriously, it won’t.

I waited for Amma to discover it, to say something, to cover my room with salt, but she never did.

Frankly, she should already know, but I guess mystery graffiti in an unknown language blanketing the school wasn’t mentioned by anyone ever, so even though she’s tapped into the all-knowing grapevine of the town, she doesn’t think anything weird is going on with him.

There were hundreds of Casts, and only a few of them were in English. The rest were written in languages I couldn’t read, and the Caster language we couldn’t hope to decipher.

Maybe if you weren’t so goddamn lazy. Ages ago Lena pointed out that there might be a dictionary in Pretty Suit’s library. They didn’t go at the time because her uncle would be waking up soon, but there’s no reason they couldn’t search through it the next morning for a book like that.

Perhaps there turns out to not be any such book, but in that case, he’d be saying they failed to find a dictionary, not that it was just straight up impossible.

“Claim yourself. That doesn’t even mean anything.”
“Of course it does.”
“None of the chapters say anything about it. It’s not in any description of the Claiming in the Book.”

Except for the part where it says normally casters pick which side gets them. I’m starting to think this really is just a rape metaphor, because this sentence requires you sub the word in to make sense. It only works if there’s some reason the verb can only be done to her, not by her.

“We just have to keep looking. It’s not like we’re going to read it in the Cliff Notes.”

Actually, why not?

This whole thing is based around the idea the only relevant information must be in the book, but they have no reason to think that. All they actually know is that the spell that fucked things up was in the book, which makes sense because it’s a list of spells, and that apparently the book is in charge of picking who goes light and who dark. Now, the fact it was missing does mean that if there was a solution in there, people wouldn’t know yet, but there’s the counter-fact that it didn’t go missing right after she did the spell but apparently much later, so at the least Genevieve had plenty of time to pour over it – and she could actually read the different languages properly. And even if it’d gone missing on the spot, all that means is the solution possibly could be there, not that it is.

And none of that means that everything they need is in the book. There’s an infinite library in just their town alone, there must be a ridiculous amount of information about casters and magic and claiming around, and statistically some proportion of those are going to be clearer than this.

Their ability to access the books, of course, is more of a problem – but there doesn’t appear to be any actual reason they can’t get into the library. They should have gone in there during Christmas – there’s just no excuse. So what if they’re grounded? They were willing to break far more of the rules getting the book in the first place. And they should keep going if they don’t find what they need when they look during official hours. It seems to be there, the librarian just keeps the door locked. Lena’s magic is off the charts, so I’d be willing to accept her just smashing her way in, and she could also steal the key. But maybe it’s magically Bound, since binding can do anything, to only exist when the librarian turns the key at certain times. In that case, they’d be saying they can’t get to the books rather than talking like this is the only one in existence. They should also, again, sneak into Pretty Suit’s library – they might not find anything, but it’s an obvious thing to try.

I don’t know why that kind of thing never happens in books. I mean, it can’t simply be that they think it won’t sell, because a solid 80% of every Harry Potter book was Harry doing stuff that didn’t work out. Do they not want to show the protagonist failing? Or maybe it’s that they don’t see all the obvious ways something could fail – I know sometimes I’m complaining about why a character didn’t do something and people think I mean I wanted the plot to go a different way and no, have them fail fine whatever, but doing that would’ve been the obvious thing to try and by not doing so they seem like an idiot.

The Book of Moons had to have the answer, if we could just find it.

No, it doesn’t. Especially when you know exactly how this happened and all it was was doing the wrong spell, or maybe the right spell at the wrong time.

Hm, I wonder if casters these days would just freeze the body until the right moon phase? I mean, does it matter how damaged the body gets? If it’s really just a binary life/death binding thing, once you’re dead it’s not like you get more dead.

They sit in different beds thoughtspeaking at each other as and she wonders if maybe they shouldn’t have met because blah blah we’ve been through this. On to the next chapter!

2.04

Lena’s birthday was in a week.

Oh thank god. It felt like we’d never get there.

Seven days.

Seven days! Seven days!

Lena and I were exhausted, but we ditched school anyway to spend the day with The Book of Moons.

I’m not sure why exhaustion contradicts the idea of ditching school. If they weren’t run ragged, they could handle both school and research.

I had become an expert at Amma’s signature, and Miss Hester wouldn’t dare to ask Lena for a note from Macon Ravenwood.

More to the point, no one wants Lena at the school so they don’t care she’s skipping.

Emothan’s signature-forging skills, being completely irrelevant in a world where everyone chats with everyone, points to the idea that he’s now in the same category. They’re likely going out of their way to not say anything to Amma because she might get him to stop skipping.

I could tell Lena was starting to give up. Her ceiling was completely covered in Sharpie, wallpapered with the words she couldn’t say and thoughts she was too scared to express.
darkfire, lightdark / dark matter, what matters? the great darkness swallows the great light, as they swallow my life / caster/girl super/natural before/first sight seven days seven days seven days 777777777777777.

Your votes made me read this, so you should share in the suffering.

Still, SEVEN DAYS SEVEN DAYS SEVEN DAYS. It’s just making me think of The Ring and normally I’d talk about how it’s bad to remind people of better media but SEVEN DAYS is the most positive I’ve felt about this book in ages. SEVEN DAYS SEVEN DAYS SEVEN DAYS. It’s enough to make up for the fact the poetry has somehow managed to get even worse.

Lena slumped against the old stone wall, crumbling like what little chance we had left. “This is impossible. There are too many Casts. We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

Is that what you’ve been trying to do?

Because what I read was you translating the fun facts section into Ye Olde Englysheseses. And there’s obviously no actual spell to fix it in the book, because she had the book and she’d have just read that one, or, assuming the fixing spell is more your rabies vaccine sort of thing than any actual cure, handed the book to her kid and pointed at the relevant part. And if that requires too much actual reasoning for you, there’s also the plain fact there can’t be a spell in the book to fix it because the book existed before the curse and Lena’s said her family is unique for their curse, so what you’re looking for is apparently a spell written by a precognitive to fix a problem that had never happened yet.

Here I thought you guys were trying to actually work out what you needed to do! I thought you were incompetent in execution, but I didn’t realize even your basic idea of what to do was wrong.

Obviously you need a new spell. Now, if spells were actually complicated, you’d need to cobble it together from related spells and figure out what elements go with what concept. Maybe rosemary (memory) can be used to reset things to how they were previously – resetting people to before their claiming, resetting the claiming to how it worked before Genevieve, and you need a bowl of water to trap the moon when it’s at half, then use a mirror to make it appear full as it was when the spell was first done. At the last moment, when the dark power reaches out to stop you, pour ink into the bowl, transforming it into the dark moon mentioned earlier as for another type of magic entirely and causing, for a moment before the moon is simply free, a disruption in the magical energies just enough to divert the tendril the dark sent after you into the bowl. Cast the bowl into the fire, then make your own choice.

But instead spells are just a matter of explaining how you want them to work. Read a couple to get an idea of the rhythm, maybe try making a spell or three to see you’ve got the hang of it, then write one up saying UNDO CONSEQUENCES OF DEATH/LIFE BINDING ATTEMPT and you’re good.

There were Casts for every conceivable purpose: Blinding the Unfaithful, Bringing Forth Water from the Sea, Binding the Runes.

Is there anything binding can’t do? And wow, drinking water from salt water, that’s awfully specific. Useful, I guess, but Create Food And Water seems more versatile, and Don’t Be Shipwrecked more to the point.

But I like the Blinding the Unfaithful. Is that just editorializing about what you’re supposed to use it for, or does it only work on the unfaithful? And are we talking like husband cheating unfaithful or THERE IS NO WAY BUT JESUS unfaithful? Can you just cast this on people all the time and see if any of them go blind? Maybe the previous spell was Turn Blue the Unfaithful but then they’d get a warning and might betray you, so a new spell was made that’d cripple any unfaithful ones hit by the spell instead.

Actually, we don’t really know much of anything about how any spells work, do we? The only one that’s been really focused on is the binding-death-to-life one, which seemed to go on the idea of fixed quantities – she can’t make life, she can only bind to her existing life. The rest seem to just be statements, like calling for protection on a relative, and most of what we see casters doing isn’t that. How much are spells used? Ridley didn’t seem to need any to blow stuff up at the dance, and her conjugation tricks don’t involve any mumbling either, so sirens or possibly everyone can just manifest cute mice in their hand without needing to bother saying a spell. And Marian have a spell on her door that’s an illusion from the illusionist suggests that there are no illusionary casts, which, if it holds true in general, would mean no spells that emulate native abilities – which would ban shapeshifting, weather control, etc. That could actually be a cool magic rule – a setting where people have certain innate magic powers, and the spell-powers only cover other areas. So you could spell rocks to be forever hot, but if pyrokinesis is a born power, there’s no spell for slinging fireballs into someone’s face.

So hm. No transforming of self or other, no weather magic, no illusion magic. Ridley is able to make mice and lollipops appear while Pretty Suit’s kitchen appears to have to actually make the food somehow, so I guess that’s why getting water from the sea is important – only some people can make water just manifest and if you’re not one you might need that spell, and there’s no weather spells to stop the storm from sinking your ship or rain or blow you to shore.

But nothing that said Cast to Uncurse Your Family from a Dark Binding

Well yes, if there was a cast to remove curse then curses wouldn’t be much of a thing to magic users.

or Cast to Undo the Act of Trying to Bring Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Genevieve’s War Hero Back to Life

Oh he’s a war hero now?

or Cast to Avoid Going Dark at Your Claiming.

I keep telling you there can’t be a spell like that in the book because the book was written before that was an issue.

I turned back to the Table of Contents:

The what.

This handwritten book in a million languages has a table of contents?

OBSECRATIONES, INCANTAMINA, NECTENTES, MALEDICENTES, MALEFICIA.

I don’t even care anymore. I can only try to make sense of things for so long before it’s just too obvious no one cares and there’s nothing there.

He adds that his nightmares seem to have gotten worse and thinks maybe it’s the book, but in that not very serious way rather than realizing that this book could do all sorts of stuff to him.

My only strategy was to stay awake. Jacked up on sugar and caffeine from drinking Coke and Red Bull, playing video games. Reading everything from Heart of Darkness to my favorite issue of Silver Surfer, the one where Galactus swallows the universe

I just did a quick readthrough of Galactus’ history, since he’s a planet-eater, not universe-eater, and if this was a storyline, it wasn’t popular enough with anyone to make it into the wiki.

Anyway, he falls asleep, yet another nightmare etc…

I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Something was moving, in the shadows.
There was someone in my room.
“Holy crap!”
He tried to get out before I noticed him, but he wasn’t fast enough. He knew I’d seen him. So he did the only thing he could do. He turned to face me.
“Although I myself don’t consider it particularly holy, who am I to correct you after such an ungraceful exit?” Macon smiled his Cary Grant smile and approached the end of my bed. He was wearing a long black coat and dark slacks. He looked like he was dressed for some kind of turn-of-the-century night on the town, instead of a modern-day breaking and entering. “Hello, Ethan.”
“What the hell are you doing in my bedroom?”

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh god he’s Edward he’s literally Edward this is beautiful. It is as beautiful as Pretty Suit and Edward.

He seemed at a loss, for Macon, which just meant he didn’t have an immediate and charming explanation on the tip of his tongue. “It’s complicated.”
“Well, uncomplicate it. Because you climbed in my window in the middle of the night, so either you’re some kind of vampire or some kind of perv, or both.

Yes. Yes. Someone find me fusion fic of Twilight with Emothan and Pretty Suit.

Anyway Mr. Climbed In Your Window To Creepily Stare At You While You’re Asleep is all offended.

I’m not a Hunter, nor a Harmer. You would be confusing me with my brother, Hunting. Blood doesn’t interest me.”

Pretty Suit is really terrible at reassurances. “Oh blood no that’s a ridiculous thing to worry about because that’s my brother who does that.”

“Neither blood nor flesh.” He lit a cigar, rolling it between his fingers. Amma was going to have a fit when she smelled that tomorrow. “In fact, it all makes me a bit squeamish.”

So is this why Pretty Suit’s got no kids? It’d be interesting if you had a setup where only the more physical hungers were compatible with reproduction.

He walked over to the cheap swivel chair next to my desk and sat down in one sweeping movement. “Let’s just say I was eavesdropping.”
I picked up the old Jackson High basketball T-shirt balled up on the floor and pulled it over my head.

So poor Emothan was facing Pretty Suit half naked. Or entirely naked. They put people on watch lists for this sort of shit, Pretty Suit.

Anyway, he clarifies that the eavesdropping was on the dreams, and Emothan says what that’s a caster power now too?

“I’m afraid not. I’m not a Caster, not technically.”
…
“So you are a vampire.”

Oh my god Emothan it’s like you’re intelligent all of a sudden. Please stay like this.

Much like Lena’s “witches god no that’s such a dumb word, we’re casters which is exactly like that but different letters”, he takes offense to the fact it’s such a common phrase, such a cliché, and so unflattering.

So…?

I’m an Incubus.

Okay Emothan, you should probably start screaming for Amma that’s actually worse than vampire.

An Incubus? I didn’t even know if I should be scared.

YES YOU SHOULD THEY’RE RAPE DEMONS

He explains RAPE DEMONS have powers that are relative to our strength, which we must replenish regularly.” so I guess regular casters just have set levels of power regardless of what condition they’re in? At least his side of things makes sense.

“We feed, for lack of a better word, on Mortals to replenish our strength.”

Now, the question is, does this mean they have to feed on mortals or they choose to?

Only a Blood Incubus feeds on Mortal blood, and I am not a Blood Incubus. Although we are both Lilum—those who dwell in the Absolute Darkness—I am something entirely more evolved. I take something you Mortals have in abundance, something you don’t even need.”
“What?”
“Dreams. Fragmented bits and pieces. Ideas, desires, fears, memories— nothing you miss.”

Okay you say dreams and that’s reasonable, and then you list stuff that sure sounds like it’s more like thoughts, and like maybe people don’t “miss” them because you ate it and they don’t know it’s there any longer.

And if this is harmless dreams I again say this is so damn broken.

Also please don’t use words like evolved, book, this is confusing enough without wondering if dream incubi are a more recent variant. Also, way to be a dick, if you’re born this way you shouldn’t be acting like it’s a personal failing of your brother to need blood rather than dreams.

And are they human? Because lilum are Lilith’s kids, so another species. And if they’re not, then that implies casters aren’t either, since the same force made both. We know casters can presumably interbreed with lilum (unless – and here’s an interesting thing I don’t think I’ve seen, what if the Ravenwood/Duchanne connection is by marriage but not by blood? Marriages don’t have to result in children.)

Anyway, apparently there’s more to the dream and he’s just been eating it to hide the truth. Emothan’s objections to this summon Amma, who starts screaming about how “We have an agreement. This house is off-limits. You find somewhere else to do your dirty business.” and he doesn’t even try to defend what he’s doing as harmless but goes right for it being necessary, so yeah, I’m thinking he’s devouring thoughts from people.

“I know what you do and what you are, Melchizedek, and you will deal with the Devil in due time. Don’t you bring that evil into my house.”
“I made a choice long ago, Amarie. I’ve fought what I was destined to be. I fight it every night of my life. But I am not Dark, not as long as I have the child to concern me.”

So it really seems that what he’s doing hurts people a lot.

Emothan, showing good focus, just continues to insist that he needs to know how the damn dream ends, and he says that it’s disturbing and he doesn’t want Lena to see it, and she’ll see it if Emothan does.

“I am only trying to protect her. I love Lena, and I would never—”
“—I know, I’ve heard it. You’d never do anything to hurt her. What you forgot to say is that you won’t do anything to help her, either.”
His jaw tightened. Now he was the one who was angry

No shit. You’re just saying stuff at random now – you have no clue, even now, what “help” involves, and you’ve spent the whole book ignoring the one and only bit of information we have about what determines claiming: Ridley was under a lot of stress and lashing out, said she knew she’d end up dark and was right, and she describes Lena’s lashing out behavior as proof she’ll go dark too.

This may be entirely coincidence, but right now it’s all we know. So stress increases the chance of going dark.

I mean, let’s use a real world thing. Schizophrenia appears to be triggered in part by stress. If they were concerned about that, they might want to hide the fact from her as much as possible, worried that telling her more about how bad her chances were would just increase her stress and make it certain.

Pretty Suit just says that look, Emothan really doesn’t get how things work and he and Lena are very different.

A Species Apart. Just like the other Ethan wrote to Genevieve. I understood all right. Nothing had changed in over a hundred years.

I think the more relevant information is that there’s a good chance she is literally another species.

“Mortals. I envy you. You think you can change things. Stop the universe. Undo what was done long before you came along.

Unlike casters, who think they can bring back the dead.

Seriously this is just such a stupid, stupid thing to keep saying in a book about magic, let alone one involving magic that works by telling the universe what you want.

You are such beautiful creatures.”

Title drop!

“One more thing. Does Lena know what you are?”
He smiled. “Of course. We have no secrets between us.”

Creeeeepy. So she’s okay with him mindraping her boyfriend.

But all Emothan thinks is that actually there are secrets like that book, but really he should be wondering now if that isn’t a secret either.